redletterdave writes: "After a French civil court ruled on Jan. 24 that Twitter must identify anyone who broke France's hate speech laws, Twitter has since refused to identify the users behind a handful of hateful and anti-Semitic messages, resulting in a $50 million lawsuit. Twitter argues it only needs to comply with US laws and is thus protected by the full scope of the First Amendment and its free speech privileges, but France believes its Internet users should be subject to the country's tighter laws against racist and hateful forms of expression."

"We also reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information as we reasonablybelieve is necessary to (i) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request..."https://twitter.com/tos [twitter.com]

Reading the translated article then wikipedia. The case was heard and judged by theTribunal de Grande Instance of Paris (Google Translate) a minor jurisdiction, that hears hears minor civil cases.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicia [wikipedia.org]